Free Republic

Nina Moreyeva, a Moscow resident who lives on a pension, doesn't agree with the widespread perception in the West that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been too muscular in his actions in Ukraine. Quite the opposite. She believes Russia had the right to annex the Ukrainian territory of Crimea – even if it meant going to war with Kiev. "Crimea is deep in our history," she says. "I have never accepted that it was given to Ukraine" by former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. Nor is she worried about the West imposing sanctions. "Russia shouldn't be under anyone's thumb,"...

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Barack Obama of dramatically weakening the United States' position in the world, drawing a straight line between Obama’s ever-yielding foreign policy and the increasing troubles around the world. Rice “Right now, there’s a vacuum,” she told a crowd of more than two thousand attending the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner last night in Washington, D.C. “There’s a vacuum because we’ve decided to lower our voice. We’ve decided to step back. We’ve decided that if we step back and lower our voice, others will lead, other things will fill that vacuum.” Citing Bashar...

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Barack Obama of dramatically weakening the United States' position in the world, drawing a straight line between Obama’s ever-yielding foreign policy and the increasing troubles around the world.

Speaking at the press conference after the EU-US summit yesterday the US President wrongly suggested that Georgia "is not currently on a path to NATO membership". In fact the country has been on the path to membership since 2008. At the North Atlantic Council in Bucharest that year the attending Heads of State and Government agreed the following statement: "NATO welcomes Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that they will become members of NATO." Former Georgian Ambassador to London Giorgi Badridze, told Breitbart London: "President Obama's remarks could hardly have come at a worse time –...

BRUSSELS — President Obama offered a sustained and forceful rejoinder against Russia on Wednesday, denouncing the “brute force” he said it has used to intimidate neighbors like Ukraine and vowing that the United States “will never waver” in standing up for its NATO allies against aggression by Moscow. In a speech meant as a capstone to his trip to Europe in the midst of an East-West confrontation with Russia, Mr. Obama addressed Moscow’s justifications for its intervention in Ukraine point by point, dismissing them as “absurd” or unmerited. He even defended the Iraq war, which he had opposed as a...

On a playground or in a bar, the most important thing to know about a bully is his motivation. What ticks him off? Who's his next victim? If it's you, how do you avoid a butt-kicking? On the world stage, Vladimir Putin is a bully – and President Obama not only seems clueless about the Russian leader's inner drive, he embraces his ambivalence. "I'm less interested in motivation," Obama said Monday in The Hague, "and more interested in the facts and the principles that not only the United States but the entire international community are looking to uphold." Taken at...

Romney still wrong about Russia, says Obama. Speaking at a brief news conference in the Hague, President Obama said he's more worried about a loose nuke being detonated in Manhattan than he is about Russia: "With respect to Mr. Romney's assertion that Russia is our number one geopolitical foe, the truth of the matter is that America has a whole lot of challenges," said the president. "Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neigbors, not out of strength, but out weakness. "Ukraine has been a country which Russia had enormous influence for decades, since the...

resident Barack Obama flies Sunday to a Europe shaken by Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea and his threats against eastern parts of Ukraine. At a summit conference at The Hague on preventing nuclear terrorism – scheduled long before the Ukraine crisis – Obama will confer with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders. On Monday afternoon Obama will meet with President Xi Jinping of China, Russia’s neighbor and sometime rival. Putin has forced the United States and Europe to refocus on the origins of the modern transatlantic alliance -- the 1949 NATO defense partnership designed to prevent a Russian invasion...

Now that the deadline for signing up for the ironically named Affordable Care Act is upon us, it’s a good time to remember that just about everything our president has told us has been – let’s be nice and simply call it – untrue Despite his promise, not all of us who like our doctor can keep our doctor, period. And millions of us who liked our old insurance plans cannot keep them, period. I don’t know about you, but my premiums went up, not down, despite President Obama’s promises to the contrary. And what did the president learn from...

On Yom Kippur, 1972, I was standing alongside a Soviet Jewish dissident outside Moscow’s lone synagogue when we were suddenly surrounded by KGB agents. Sensing my alarm, the refusenik sought to disarm my fear with some vintage Soviet humor. “In the Socialist Paradise,” he said with a nod toward the plainclothes men, “the workers make believe they worked and the State make believes they paid them.” That one-liner keeps coming to mind when trying to figure out if Secretary of State John Kerry’s tenacious and tedious struggle to create an agreed-upon “framework” for Israeli/Palestinian peace is real or just another...

Whenever Bibi Netanyahu visits the White House, every word and gesture and demeanor is micro-analyzed to find indications of friction or combativeness or discomfort. Yet earlier this week, Mahmoud Abbas visited President Obama and said some outrageous things that were roundly ignored by the media. I would also like to affirm what you have said, that we are working for a solution that is based on international legitimacy and also the borders — the 1967 borders so that the Palestinians can have their own independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital and so that we can find a fair...

No one should begrudge the President a little rest and frivolity. There is a time and a place for it. The issue for a President is picking the time and place for such things. George W. Bush refused to golf once the wars started, deciding that the appearance of the President golfing sent the wrong message. Bush was forever attacked for spending a month at his ranch every summer, despite the fact that he had the same access to the government and the world that he had in the White House. Bill Clinton took less vacation time than Bush, spending...

On Wednesday's "Tonight Show" on NBC, host Jimmy Fallon as Russian President Vladimir Putin took a shot at ObamaCare, sang "McCain in the Ukraine" and "Let It Go" from Disney's "Frozen" during a phone call sketch with a President Barack Obama impersonator. The call wrapped up with Fallon as Putin confirming nothing was accomplished...

Washington (CNN) -- It must have been at least a little satisfying Thursday for President Barack Obama. He had repeatedly warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against annexing Crimea from Ukraine, threatening tougher sanctions aimed at the Russian economy. Following the Russian parliament's vote to approve the annexation, Obama made a previously unscheduled appearance before TV cameras to essentially tell Putin: I told you I'd do it. "These are all choices that the Russian government has made, choices that have been rejected by the international community, as well as the government of Ukraine," Obama said. "And because of these choices, the...

Russia appears to be deliberately fomenting more violence in Ukraine, possibly in advance of an invasion. Putin is no Hitler, but Hitler would recognize his moves. Violence is spreading throughout Ukraine on a course that looks exactly like conscious and deliberate Russian preparation for a wider war. Without telepathic powers it is impossible to know what is going on in the mind of the one man who can control developments in Ukraine, but overnight the chances of additional Russian military action against its helpless neighbor appeared to grow. On Friday in Donetsk conflict between pro-and anti-Russia groups left one man...

The western countries' sanctions against Russia that the EU and US officials are currently discussing as part of retaliation for Crimea' accession to Russia may threaten the interests of European business companies. Officials of the French companies DCNS and STX have already voiced concern about the likely collapse of the deal to deliver Mistral-class helicopter-carriers to the Russian Federation. Paris may give up the contract for building Mistral-class amphibious assault ships for Russia as part of the western countries' economic sanctions against the Russian Federation, a move that may lay off 600 workers, engaged in the project. Le Figaro also...

President Obama announced Thursday that he is imposing sanctions on additional senior Russian officials and others over the country's annexation of Crimea, warning that broader economic sanctions could be in store if Russia does not stand down. The president, speaking on the South Lawn of the White House, voiced concern that Russian military positioning could point to "further incursions" into southern and eastern Ukraine. He also issued an executive order giving the U.S. authority to impose sanctions on "key sectors of the Russian economy."

It’s unfair to expect Obama to do anything about Ukraine when his biggest priority is convincing twenty-somethings to buy worthless health insurance policies by appearing on online comedy shows and deploying his March Madness bracket. The Obama Twitter feeds are filled with desperate pleas to buy ObamaCare; harnessing every memeworthy bit of internet detritus from cat pictures to twerking in the hopes of convincing healthy young people who don’t want health insurance to buy it anyway. On March 17th, Obama’s Twitter linked to a statement on Ukraine and then it was back to “There’s only 14 days to get coverage.”...

Moments after Obama "escalated" against Russia with a second set of sanctions, here comes the prepared Russian statement, which bars the following US individuals from entering the Russian Federation "in relation to the US sanctions over Ukraine and Crimea." The people sanctioned via the Russian foreign ministry: •Caroline Atkinson •Daniel Pfeiffer •Benjamin Rhodes •Harry Reed (sic) •John Boehner •Robert Menendez •Mary Landrieu •John McCain •Daniel Coats The original, with Harry Reid's name misspelled: More detail from RIA: In the sanctions list of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia against the United States, including Barack Obama's aides entered Pfeiffer and...

Pope Francis was named the world's greatest leader by Fortune magazine, topping a diverse list released Thursday. Fortune’s first list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders includes a Hollywood actress, a baseball superstar, a teenage education advocate and the president of a small California college. It also includes a former American president, but the current one failed to make the cut. Former President Bill Clinton ranks No. 5 on the list, selected for being a “relentless and forceful advocate” in numerous causes, but noticeably absent is one of his successors and the current leader of the free world. "President Obama...